Spell Revisions' compatibility with BG2 EE?

Akuro

Hi there,

so I was thinking: If I can play BG2 EE 'only' in English, why not trying out the great Spell Revisions mod, which also isn't available in my mother tongue by now...

I could install the spell revisions mod 3.4 without any problems and the ingame texts and effects changed properly as well. Nevertheless I could not find it in the "BGII:EE Compatible Mod List"-thread.

Does anybody know if that mod is compatible with BG2EE in the long run? So far I haven't had any problems but only one:
Whenever I summon monsters with the "Summon Monster I" spell, the appearing Hobgoblin archers steadily shout "forward march, forward march, forward march" when they attack an enemy and then stutter from time to time.
But then again, that could be a problem which occurs due to the bugs in the "vanilla" BG2 EE - who knows?

What do you guys think? Have you tested "Spell Revisions" so far?

Shin

Afaik it's being updated for compatibility. But @Demivrgvs might be interested in this.

Akuro

Hey, thank's for this "update" - that would be awesome! I gotta say - the more I play the English version of BG2 EE, the more I like it (compared to the German vanilla BG2 version).

The voicing, the beautiful UI, zooming in & out with the mousewheel and now SCS and Spell Revisions - grrrr, can't wait for the update

Demivrgvs

I cannot guarantee the current version to be 100% compatible with BGEE, but for the most part even the current version of SR seem to work fine with BGEE.

That being said, we are going to release a new version within a couple of weeks which will indeed aim to make the the mod fully compatible.

Regarding your issue with summoned hobgoblins I don't remember it happening but I'll look into it and fix it asap if I can reproduce it. If you encounter any issue between SR and BGEE just let me know.

Akuro

@Demivrgs

Now that's why I love the community of the Baldurs Gate series - so many people are old hands or really care about their modding projects!

Thanks for giving us that update about your mod - I'm really looking forward to the next version of "Spell Revisions"!
Furthermore, I guess it's no pain if it will take some more time until release, as from what I hear and see, BG2 EE still has some bugs on its own, that need to be fixed.

harticus33

Love this! Only now I have to uninstall some stuff and put in spell revisions, then reinstall stuff, hmmm. Maybe I'll just wait until I actually finish bg ee haha. I'm putting in a lot of work right now and I'm not even ready for bgII ee.

harticus33

@Akuro thinking about the mod install order in the big main thread, where did you put spell revisions in? I'm getting ready to start my bg II ee playthrough and can't wait anymore!

Akuro

MHhh.. I'd love to give you a reliable answer here, but the problem is:

The first time after I had installed SR 3.1 on top of a clean install of BG2 EE it worked pretty well (except for some minor bugs).
Then I realized that BG2 EE still has many bugs which make it unplayable at the moment (at least for me - for example: I couldn't scroll to the left with my cursor / characters had weird hair colours after I did a reload etc.)

So I set up a clean install of BG2 EE again. And now here's the fun part: I was so Spell Revision - addicted that I installed it again on a fresh installation of BG2 EE, because I just wanted to mess around with all those "new" spells while being in the starting dungeon.
This time I somehow messed something up with the install order, because all the spells had totally unmatching tlk.-descriptions.
Hands down, it was my fault, because SR isn't compatible with BG2 EE YET. I just wanted to say that I have no clue why I got it to work the first time. As far as I can remember, I installed the following mods:
Spell Revisions, Dungeon be gone and SCS.
Anyway - I realized there's no hope for me at the moment:
With the bugs of BG2 EE and an imminent release of a new version of SR (which will work with BG2 vanilla, too!) it made no sense to play BG2 EE or BGT at the moment.

I'm afraid I'm in the same dilemma as you pal - I just want to play BG22 with all the good stuff but
a) I have to wait for the next BG22 EE patch because in my first hours of gameplay I had some really weird bugs which make the game at least for me unplayable and
b) I simply can't and don't want to play BG2 or BG2 EE without Demivrgvs mods anymore. Seriously - Spell Revisions and Item Revisions have become a MUST for me - and when I saw that he has also great plans for Kit Revisions, he had me completely.

So what I will do now is:
1. Wait for Demi to release his new versions of "Spell Revisions", "Item Revisions" and "Kit Revisions". There seems to be lots of awesome new stuff in it.
2. Install them together with BGT Big Picture.
3. Enjoy the good ol' times of the whole BG Saga WITH all the awesome new stuff from SR, IR, KR and SCS!
4. In the meantime: Wait until the guys from Beamdog have managed to fix BG2 EE completely / until it's at least playable.
5. Then switch over to BG2EE for the rest of my gaming experience with the Baldurs Gate series. The new UI and the mousewheel zoom feature are just too damn good to be true!

I don't know if this is helpful or not, maybe @Demivrgvs will release his mods soon and you'll be able to enjoy BG2 EE in all "its glory"...

Speaking for me, I wish I only could play at least "any" Baldurs Gate with new versions of his mods, no matter if that would be BGT or BG2 EE

Cheers,
Akuro

harticus33

Ah, thanks for the info. Ha i guess work and life will keep me busy until all of the work is done! Almost tempting to go back and just play the non ee version with full mods, but I guess I can wait too! Also I want ascension...

Demivrgvs

@Akuro @harticus33 the currently available SR version wasn't done to be compatible with BGEE but overall it should already work almost fine because SR re-writes and re-assings all spell descriptions (string references is one of the main issues between old mods and BGEE). I don't know why SR worked fine last time for you and now it does not get the right descriptions, it's very strange...

Regardless, the new version of Item Revision is pretty much ready (we are writing the readme right now, after that in a matter of days it should be out), and the new version of Spell Revisions should follow it within 1-2 weeks. Both will be fully compatible with BGEE and BG2EE.

Regarding Kit Revisions instead, I just made available a new beta few days ago, it's compatible with BGEE, but it's still a beta. Some classes and kits are pretty much finished and in a really great state (e.g. all fighters except the Berserker), but for a complete release I would not hold my breath.

stargazerb

@Demivrgvs A welcome update! Thank you very much. I really look forward to all three.

Darkersun

Will it be possible to use it on a running save game ? Or would it only have an impact on not found items & spells ? Like NPC modifications, that are only used if you haven't talked it the NPC yet.

Demivrgvs

@Darkersun, yes, both Item Revisions and Spell Revisions can be installed on an ongoing game. The only thing that may lead to weird things is IR's "Store Revisions & item re-allocations" component, simply because it moves around many items. You won't lose your acquired ones, but you may miss others (e.g. if you have already done a quest and an item is moved there) or you may end up with multiple copies of the same item (e.g. you have obtained an item in your saved game which is now moved to an area you still have to explore in your game).

Kit Revisions is a different beast instead, and isn't so friendly on a saved game. Furthermore, if you play with SCS (highly recommended) you need to install it after KR because the former does marvelous things such as patching creatures to give them KR's revised saving throws (e.g. thieves getting good saves vs. breath), thac0 tables and all the new features (e.g. without SCS an AI Berserker would use KR's revised Rage, but would not get the new passive Diehard feature).

P.S tag me whenever you want to ask a direct question, I don't lurk around these forums as much as G3 ones.

Darkersun

Thanks I will tag you if I have future questions (intentinal not done in this answer). I'm so exited about the new version. Thanks for updating it.
I will try to provide as much feedback as possible.

Edit: I'm the same Darkersun on the G3 forum

harticus33

@Demivrgvs Hey question about IR and SR, and possibly KR since reading the above post! I'm currently playing through bg ee and going to start bg II ee as soon as I'm finished. If the updates aren't done I'm just going to give it the ol' college try with the current versions. In the post on this website that gives the list and install order for bg2ee mods where would you recomend trying to install IR SR and KR? I know that this might not end well and I'll have to wait for updated versions but I just wanted your professional opinion! I loved SR so much I literally can't play bg 2 without it.

Demivrgvs

@harticus33 I'm truly sorry about the delay, though for once it's not my fault, both IR and SR are pretty much ready but Mike has been really busy and unfortunately he's the one of us who does the final checks for compatibility issues and all the packaging stuff for the official releases. I still hope we can release them during these holidays, but I cannot guarantee it.

That being said, looking at that install order I'd say you can install them almost at any time as long as they are installed before Tweak Pack, RR and SCS. The latter in particular makes several checks and adjustments to the scripts if it detects Revisions mods.

When it comes to compatibility, you will surely run into some issue with IR, though I don't know myself the full extension of them, but I actually expect SR to work quite fine. KR instead is fully compatible from the start. It's still a beta, but if you want to try it out I know quite a few players who are already enjoying it a lot. Just stay away from the Berserker, we are messing with it a lot, and unlike the other released classes he is indeed in a "beta" stage with fluctuating performances depending on the game stages (it seems to work well only within BG1 for now).

harticus33

@Demivrgvs No apologies! You guys are pretty incredible doing all of this in your spare time! I appreciate the info! I'm in the midst of my playthrough for bg 1 and am stoked to hit bg 2. IR isn't as necessary as SR for me. Love mages. Taking my time so maybe I'll get lucky, tho either way it'll be great. I'm hopeful ascension will be out too, but it sounds like its being a tough one to transfer to ee. Thanks for the quick response! Don't work too hard, enjoy the holiday's too

harticus33

@Demivrgvs Hey sorry to bother you again but I was installing my mods for a bg2 runthrough and hit this problem with spell revisions. When in the installer box it skips all the options saying that this is intended for the bg2 engine and will not function in another game. Am i doing something wrong with the installer? Its in the right folder. Thanks for any info you can give!

Is there a file it checks for that I need to move to the main directory or something?

Demivrgvs

@harticus33 those tweaks work by hacking the exe file of the game, and currently work only on the old games because of that.

The good news instead is that after looking into it for the next release I can now tell you that the main component of the old version (the one you have installed) should already be perfectly compatible with BGEE. That being said, if you encounter any issue just let me know.

harticus33

@Demivrgvs Sorry, it doesn't show in that window but it says the same error occurs for the main component, it doesn't think that bg2 is there. Maybe it just isn't possible but from what @Akuro said above I thought it would at least install...

If there's no way to move things around and get even only the main component working for bg2ee i can put my waiting boots on

KaineP

@Demivrgvs Could you link IR, SR, and KR when the new versions are released? I can't seem to fins anything but version 2(for IR and SR) currently.

Demivrgvs

@harticus33 it may be because the Weidu version shipped with the mod is too old, and @Akuro may have installed some newer mod before SR which has updated SR's one (Weidu automatically updates itself if it detects a newer version of itself). Did you installed any BGEE compatible mod before SR on your current install?

Edit: just noticed you posted at G3 too. I hope Arda can help.

@KaineP SRv3 can be found at G3 normally (http://www.gibberlings3.net/spell_rev/) while IRv3 was never officially released, you can find it and its hotfixes only within its forum (http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=22691). KR still only covers warriors and monk, but can be found here: http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showforum=168

harticus33

@Demivrgvs yeap I've installed several from the list on the first page of this post, maybe I'll try to just update the Weidu...Also it doesn't show it now when I try to install it, but when I first tried to install SR it said some things about updating Yoshimo.exe and I wasn't sure what that meant. Anyway here's my Weidu log if anything jumps out at anyone...

Checked my Weidu version it says version 236 so I don't think thats it

KaineP

@Demivrgvs Thank you very much. I don't think I could play a shield user in BG2 without IR.

Bayaz

The issue harticus has is happening to me when trying to install into a fresh bg2ee.

harticus33 said:

@Demivrgvs Sorry, it doesn't show in that window but it says the same error occurs for the main component, it doesn't think that bg2 is there. Maybe it just isn't possible but from what @Akuro said above I thought it would at least install...

If there's no way to move things around and get even only the main component working for bg2ee i can put my waiting boots on

Demivrgvs

@harticus33 @Bayaz try opening setup-spell_rev.tp2 with a text editor or notepad, you will quickly find a line saying:

REQUIRE_PREDICATE (ENGINE_IS ~soa tob~) @8996 // ~This mod is designed for the Baldur's Gate II engine and will not function on other games.~

Comment it out by adding // ahead of it like this:

// REQUIRE_PREDICATE (ENGINE_IS ~soa tob~) @8996 // ~This mod is designed for the Baldur's Gate II engine and will not function on other games.~

Note that this is a workaround, waiting for a proper new release is obviously more safe.